It’s still a great time to be alive

Whatever is going to happen with the election is going to happen. Most people have made up theirminds, and it’s unlikely that any October surprise— or even aNovember surprise— will change that. The polls have been stable for literally years now, and as of thiswriting, more than 80 million votes have already been cast. By all means vote if you haven’t yet. But once you do, pour yourself the beverage of your choice, sit back andwait with the rest of us.

And while you’re doing that, maybe you should ponder that this is a great time to be alive.

I know, I know. The pandemic is bad. The economy, while rebounding, is still amess for most people. Race relations, riots, left-wing mobs, right-wing militias, polarization— I get it. We have problems. I also understand thatmany people think that if their guy doesn’t win the presidency, we’re doomed.

But take a deep breath, zoom out from yourTwitter and Facebook feeds or your TVscreen, and look at the big picture. I mean the really big picture.

Agreat lens for getting that picture into focus is “Ten GlobalTrendsEvery Smart Person ShouldKnow” byRonald Bailey andMarion L. Tupy. For brevity’s sake, Iwon’t cite all of their sources, but the skeptical reader should knowthat the authors drawfromuncontroversial, mainstream sources such as theU.N., the WorldBank, theBureau ofLabor Statistics and peer-reviewed academic studies.

Let’s start globally. For years, itwas popular on the left to decry the costs of globalization. That complaint is more popular on the right these days. From either perspective, globalization— the melding of markets around theworld through relaxed trade and technological innovation— has definitely created winners and losers. But if you’re scoring on a global scale, the wins outweigh and outnumber the losses by orders ofmagnitude.

Pick almost any starting point over the last half-century. Extreme poverty has been crushed andmay be on itsway to disappearing in the next decade or two. In 1990, roughly 1.9 billion people lived in extreme poverty (defined as making less than $1.90 per day). Since then, world population has grownfrom5.28 billion to 7.8 billion, while the number of people living in extremepoverty has dropped to

650million and continues to fall. That’s because theworld has been getting richer— the wholeworld, not just the top 1%. From1900 to 2016, global GDPper capita grewby about 621%. Even global inequality— the gap between rich and poor countries— has started to decline appreciably over the last two decades.

Wealth doesn’t solve everything for individuals or societies, but it helps a lot. Which iswhy literacy, infant mortality, hunger, work-related deaths and almost any other hallmark of humanmisery you can think of have been improving for decades. Even natural disasters are less lethal.

Sure, global anti-poverty and public health programs have played a role, but the primary driver of all these improvements has been the expansion of trade, liberty, markets and innovation. And even thoseworthy public programswere paid for by massive expansions in global wealth.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse have all lost ground. Wars between countries are increasingly rare, and fewer people die fromthe ones that break out. Famine, where it exists, is largely man-made now(governments blocking food for political reasons). Disease is having a moment with the pandemic, but the 1918 fluwas farworse. Death is still with us, but it claims us later and later— global life expectancy has been increasing by a total of threemonths every year.

Making theworld better is nice, you might say, but American policy should benefit America.

That raises interesting moral and ethical questions, but wherever you come down, it doesn’t change the fact that things here at homearemuchbetter than politicians and pundits often claim. Americans have gotten richer over the last 40 years. The share of household income spent on necessities has dropped. Homeownership and home size have gone up even as the population has grown. Violent crime plummeted by

about50% from1970 to 2018. Racial attitudes have improved across the board.

Again, none of this is to saywe don’t have problems. But when allwe hear about are the problems, it’s not surprising that people think allwe have are problems.